Monday, November 25, 2013

This Q&A focuses on the Shibutanis' profilic, cross-platform presence on social media, which includes ShibSib Production videos featuring other high profile figure skaters in entertaining, light-hearted video shorts.

The quote that stands out is this:

On a very fundamental level, our involvement with social media today probably has its roots in the fact that a very important part of what we enjoy as athletes – particularly in a performance sport such as figure skating – is the opportunity to share experiences.

I emphasize, because the blog, and anyone else with two brain cells to rub together, has said this for years. This is how sane athletes on social media market themselves.

Share experiences. Not share your personal life. Share experiences.

Not share your fake sex life. Not share your fake sex life some more. Not recast the part and then drag that faked sex life through the streets (literally). Not share your cooked up meltdowns. Not share your fake platonic passion some more. Not make an exhibitionistic jerk-off spectacle of yourself on social media while pretending that squeezing some other girl's ass on facebook helps protect your little girl.

Uh huh.

Not share your family restaurant - but be sour about it because you and your family are too good to try.

Not share your faked sex life again. Not share your faked will they or won't they dynamic for the umpteenth time. And most of all, not talking about yourselves.

It's not TALKING ABOUT YOURSELVES.

It's sharing experiences. You don't even have to share actual experiences. You can openly create experiences specifically to share. No need to open a window on your private life or even key parts of your sports life.

But who is Alex dating?

Who is Maia dating?

What about the desperate times?

Does either ever wish they had a non-sibling partner?

Where are their parents?

We're not missing out on Alex and Maia's personalities, we're not missing out on any relationship dynamic that's appropriate to share with fans, and we're not missing out on their chemistry as siblings. It's all there when they share experiences. These experiences are small slices of skating life taking place in hotel corridors, an airport, or bus. It's not some tell-all, up-close-and-personal forensic examination.

What a wonderful option, as opposed to, you know, creating a fake LIFE while insisting in mainstream media that it's your real life. What a great alternative to a marketing scheme based on mocking, scapegoating, and scamming the public that supports your sport, thus revealing your actual attitude towards that public, which is superiority. What a clear rebuttal to the patronizing message implied in every profile, every public breath you take, which is that your deviant marketing practices are the only way.

That's just insulting. Don't blame us for your crazy.

And, what a splendid alternative to recruiting star struck, erstwhile journalists into serving as your personal gatekeepers and fellow scammers.

As the Shibs do things (and as Moore-Towers Moscovitch do it in more random fashion) we get to enjoy their "personas" while also enjoying the "personas" of other high profile skaters such as Jeff Buttle, Mao Asada, Ashley Wagner - hell, even Brian Boitano was featured. Xavier Fernandez, let's not forget him. And, recently, Moore-Towers Moscovitch have been included. If Tessa and Scott "marketed themselves" the same way, we'd enjoy the chemistry, enjoy the dynamic, and the rest would be belong to them. They'd still be able to push Lindt chocolate, Body Butter, Toyota, Audi, etc.

Seeing as they ARE interested in marketing themselves, to say the least. We're not ambushing them at home or stalking them. This is an alternative that doesn't involve fucking people over.

Why do Scott and Tessa do it the other way?

I figure it has to be because everyone around them in their communities is so obsessed with their relationship, a more logical path never occurred to any of them. They're self-obsessed, and the people around Virtue and Moir view Tessa and Scott as their own real life Bella-and-Edward. And Virtue and Moir are too fascinated by themselves to expend any energy understanding anyone or anything outside themselves.

Chemistry isn't the only reason fans - more in the past than now - speculated about their relationship and fan fictioned it. They were cuing off Moirville's own unhealthy and kind of overwhelming obsession with Tessa and Scott's relationship.

Moirville has no capacity, nor apparent interest, in understanding anybody that isn't them, so of course since they're obsessed with Scott and Tessa to a degree that rises to real life fan fiction, obviously they're going to scapegoat fans as obsessed. And by marketing Scott and Tessa around sexual titillation, they have an excuse to wallow in their own long-running obsession with it.

Would fans really have speculated as much as they did if we weren't constantly being fed stuff on both sides of the platter - the overt, intimate attachment, "platonic" passion and emotional fervor Virtue and Moir both display and cause to be written about, and Scott's fake sex life with fake girlfriends? Those two ingredients in combination get fans speculating, because Scott and Tessa go out of their way to show the chemistry, TALK ABOUT the chemistry, and behave as who they are, and then on social media it's look at Scott's sex life with this other chick.

The pollution from Virtue and Moir is pro-active, not defensive. They've primed the pump from day one. It's not our obsession with their relationship, it's their own community's obsession with their relationship and celebrity that has driven this debacle.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

You look at the comparison between these teams and it's obvious Paul/Islam didn't arrive at this level of skating yesterday. They've gotten stronger, but they had this talent and have been attentive to the fact that their discipline is ice DANCE and all the nuances of technique and bladework that that entails since their partnership began.

And yet it appeared to me at times, particularly last year, as if Skate Canada would have preferred they'd go away, or at least not do well, because they threatened Skate Canada's promotion of Gilles/Poirier. That's nuts but that's how it looked.

When Skate Canada was in the midst of its Gilles/Poirier promotional frenzy, it didn't seem as if they lifted a finger to get opportunity for Paul/Islam, a team with no reason to take a back seat to Gilles/Poirier in any respect, a team of ice dancers whose ice dance skills and multidirectional bladework done in and out of hold is substantially more developed than Gilles/Poirier's. It was as if Skate Canada wanted us to ignore them, lest anything distract from Piper & Paul.

I don't understand that thinking. Even the "error prone" knock against Paul/Islam doesn't hold water. They're a developing team. They're not going for gold. Patrick Chan fell on his ass left and right in the quad before this and he didn't have a different kind of quad (jump) either, and nobody thought well, he chokes, let him fend for himself. This (and last season, and prior seasons) is the TIME for Paul/Islam to make mistakes, to have bad competitions; that's how you learn what you need to have good competitions, so when their quad arrives, they're experienced.* But you need opportunity. Skate Canada was able to create opportunity out of thin air for Gilles Poirier (freaking TEB gala last year).

Part of the problem is the system, but, to repeat, Skate Canada prioritized opportunity for Gilles/Poirier last season and didn't lift a finger for P/I. And we can see from this comparison it certainly isn't about the skating.

I don't understand the thinking, unless one looks where it's often worthwhile to look where Skate Canada is concerned - at the directors who show every sign of being more interested in feathering their own nests than in supporting their skaters. If there's nothing in it for the directors personally, the skaters go under a bus (even Virtue Moir have experienced this it seems).

(So naturally, one wonders what IS and what WAS in it for Debbi Wilkes & Co. to fall over themselves promoting Gilles/Poirier. Paul Poirier was part of a strong team with his previous partner, but Skate Canada has eyes, and, except for when they can fake it at home, they knew damn well he couldn't skate well enough for two right off the bat.).

When we look at this comparison, clearly there is no skating reason to favor Gilles/Poirier over Paul/Islam. By "skating reason" I mean level of ability, quality of technique. Where they are as a team at this point in time, their place in the competitive picture.

I don't see the U.S. throwing pairs team Donlon Speroff under the bus. That's a gorgeous team in every way with a big gap where her jumps (and sometimes her throw landings, and sometimes his jumps) belong. Easy to write them off as beautiful no-hopers, but, lo and behold, they won Ice Challenge and she was actually in the neighborhood of clean. It's taken time (and as pairs seems more and more a sport for thirtysomethings, they have the time). When she struggled, they weren't banished to their training center.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Scott: Ice dance was a part of my life from a young age. My older brother ice danced and like many younger brothers, I wanted to follow in my older brother's footsteps. My first love was hockey, but it seemed the more I skated and danced with Tessa, the more I fell in love with the sport. Next thing I knew I had an extreme passion for the sport.

From Tessa: there was this:

Community involvement is also paramount, and I'm proud to say that both London and Ilderton have come together to help Scott and I in many ways. Needless to say, we have a wonderful support network that we rely on immensely.

Do tell.

________________________
*Correct. The bottom of the interview says it was email.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

If Scott likes people who are "out of the box" he's got one in Tessa Virtue. But what I really think is, she's so tightly wrapped inside her box she's out of the box. The way it happens when someone travels so far up their own ass the only exit is via a foreign solar system.

Based on what we can see here, along with Tessa's tremendous willpower and drive, she's someone very narrowly experienced despite her precocious personal life and mega miles logged in international travel. Someone who insufficiently examines the things that inspire her.

I mean, let's HOPE that's it.

The meeting with the Russian fans was mostly pleasant and relaxed, but punctuated with outbreaks, at expected junctures, with the usual graph-spiking WTF-ery we've come to expect from Virtue and Moir.(i.e.: the mega face reddening, downcast eyes and huge pauses following: "What does partner mean to you", the reality show where the cameras are just following them around as they carry on their normal routine, the "hard" year they trained the Latin free dance - that was such a hard year, what with Tessa's surgery and all, and they loved the program but never got it where they wanted it to be, all your fault, Baby Moir, and the part where they probably won't write another book because there's nothing left to tell - everything's out there.)

Just based on some of her interview responses when the Russian fans interviewed Tessa, Tessa misses clear connections between particular ideas - doesn't follow their implications in any sort of reasoned sequence - and she likewise fails to place some of the material that inspires her (such as The Fountainhead) in any larger context. She seemingly approaches life with an extremely narrow focus, while repeating how much she wants to be balanced.

Compartmentalization isn't balance.

She also again presents as someone whose method of dealing with information that doesn't conform to her agenda is to tune it out.

That's fine when your agenda is skating, and potential distractions from one's training focus, but it's a little scary applied to the rest of someone's life.

With Tessa we have a woman who would take both The Fountainhead and To Kill a Mockingbird - novels with diametrically incompatible world views - with her to a desert island.

Granting her the benefit of the doubt, she must read The Fountainhead narrowly, and not absorb that, in Ayn Rand's world, there are the elite, and there are cattle, and, in Rand's world, compassion isn't just a waste of time, but against nature. And the riff raff that is ordinary people are personally arrayed as obstacles between you and your goals, cause it's all about you. They're litter cluttering up your path.

And contempt is a good thing. If you feel contempt, chances are you feel it because you're a superior being for whom the presence of so much waste of space (humans not on your level) is an affront to your sensibility.

I will assume Tessa just relates to the single-mindedness with which The Fountainhead's protogonists follow their passions, and relates to their belief that there's inherent value to their passions (architecture rising to the level of what Rand thinks is art in Howard Roark's case in The Fountainhead). And maybe she relates to the Randian disdain for emotion (weakness) and her elevation of passion (fuel), as if those things are in conflict.*

(I love how Rand kind of rates "feelings" on a scale of values, and how it's the opposite scale of values of nearly all religions, and nearly all ethical systems.)

My best takeaway with Rand is that passion is what you personally feel for those who are your equals, what you feel for your exalted goals and your agenda, and emotion is having any feeling at all towards the rabble, and emotion is also the useless, base and trivial feelings experienced by the rabble, by the useless multitudes who contribute nothing.

I love how in Rand's world everything is compartmentalized - everything CAN be compartmentalized. There's nothing holistic or organic. No cause and effect or integrated systems. It's all ruthlessly parsed.

I want to look into that Windsor U psych program some day. Seriously.

Maybe it's a Windsor - "Psych!" - program.

The Maya Angelou quote Tessa used in the interview with the Russian fans:

Disclaimer: I'm not a Maya Angelou fan. I think she's the epitome of hot air. She may be a very nice person, but her whole deal is the regal demeanor, the deliberate, portentuous cadence, and the sonorous tonality. What she says SOUNDS like it must be pretty meaningful, but come on.

Tessa's quote:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Oh what bullshit. They certainly fucking do remember what you said and did. Virtue and Moir may WISH that people only remember how they made people feel, but people are going to remember and re-watch how they skated (that's what they did, isn't it?) and people are going to damn straight remember the epic, aggressive hoax, the bill of goods they sold to the public all the while proclaiming how open, honest and genuine they were being.

Let's look at some brand name famous people:

O.J. Simpson. I think people remember what he did.

Hitler: Same.

Miley Cyrus: Overdid the twerking.

Bloody Mary (Queen Mary I of England): She's called Bloody Mary cause people remember what she did.Marie Antoinette: I'm pretty sure she's reputed to have said something people remember.

Henry VIII - What do people remember besides his break with the Pope and starting the Church of England (things he did)? He married six times and beheaded a couple of wives (things he did).

Kanye West: Imma let you finish.

Roger Federer: He played tennis really well.

John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Also, Marilyn Monroe.

Ted Kennedy: Drove a lady off a bridge and she died. Was a Kennedy. And a long term senator from Massachusetts.

Martin Luther King: People still watch his speeches on youtube.

Lance Armstrong: people are going to remember what he did. He won a bunch of Tour de Frances and was brought down by a doping scandal.

At holiday dinner tables around the globe people remember some hurtful thing said by mom, dad, sibling, cousin, etc. years before (especially if it's never been resolved). They remember that kind of shit more than the person who said it remembers. Same goes for the good stuff - they never forget when someone said the right thing at the right time or went out of their way to help.

How you feel about people is CONNECTED to what they said and did.

Maybe if you're drunk all the time how something made you feel is all you're going to remember, but where else is that true outside of Moirville?**

Unless you're blowing hot air for a living like Maya Angelou (forgive me, again, not a fan), in which case the whole game is about creating a feeling-based atmosphere that distracts from what you actually did (wrote a lot of empty poetry) and said (a lot of empty poetry and quotes that fall apart). You hope that what you made people feel (or, more closely, I think, what you made people experience) - will be your ticket to immortality, cause your words and deeds aren't going to cut it.

Well sure, where Angelou is concerned. She didn't do or say much worth remembering, but she did read and speak like it was engraved on stone tablets.

With Scott and Tessa, people are going to remember what they said (how they lied and lied and lied) and what they did (how they skated). How they made people feel will be embedded with both of those things, not separate from it, and only an idiot would think what people say and do isn't CONNECTED to how they make people feel. That was one of the most asinine things out of Virtue's mouth, and that's saying something.

P.S. Scott's first idea for a desert island book was The Saint, the Surfer and the CEO, but he realized if he's the only one on a desert island he doesn't need a book telling him how to treat people. Which - WTF.

I do believe they think how you treat people only counts as what you do to their face. If people don't KNOW you're treating them like shit, manipulating and exploiting them, it doesn't count as treating them poorly. And now it's even expanded to be, it's okay if people know, as long as you don't have to acknowledge it.

Life is all presentation mark to Tessa and Scott. It's all pcs. It's all the real world version of skating skills.

A blurb about The Saint, the Surfer and the CEO:

Jack discovered a powerful philosophy to reshape his reality and access his destiny. In this revolutionary yet gentle guide to living your life at its most authentic level

That's just sad. Well, as long as they live their skating life at an authentic level, lying their asses off and exploiting those lies for profit doesn't matter I guess.
____________________________

*I did some more Rand googling, and got some bio details. Not such a surprise that in her life she was aided and abetted by the sacrifices of others - her family, and her husband (whom she apparently treated like crap). I can see if she's of the mindset that this was her due, but at the same time, just the fact that she needed these sacrifices by others in order to get anywhere refutes her ideas about superior beings achieving their goals through sheer force of their unfettered, inherent superiority. She was plenty fucking fettered at the start, and need tons of help to start climbing.

Furthermore, by doing a reality show and all of their other attention-soliciting of the rabble, Scott and Tessa are having it both ways. They're not being independent, proud artists. They're manipulators and exploiters who constantly go to the rabble for an attention fix.

**Okay, cheap shot.

P.S. - about another Tessa & Scott book - Tessa says not until they've lived a few more years and have had more experiences. That's easy to take as a signal there's going to be no reveal after Sochi. These people are consequence averse. They're accountability averse, especially to the rabble, as it were. So it sounds as if they want to get a whole bunch of miles (years) between themselves and their lies. That way Scott can continue to tout books that promote an authentic way of being without having his ass handed to him by everyone in sight.

Friday, November 15, 2013

This post will expand later. While the scores are good news, I would like to ask the relevant judges on the TEB panel precisely what a dance team needs to do to get +3 on the ss sequence. Do they need to actually fly? Do they need to finish up their doctoral dissertation while skating? Do they need to ask an audience member to join them on the ice while they continue hitting Level 4?

They got the level, so there's no tech nits in the case. It's just that somebody on the panel watched and thought - eh, +2. Actually only 3 judges gave +3. And one judge gave +1. It's amazing how the standards rise when VM skate, where when DW skate it's more like "Did they execute the element? Yes? +3!"

And one judge gave P/B (who are fine, don't get me wrong) higher pcs.

Take a look at the step sequence one judge thought should only be +1. And remember that the ISU claims judges are anonymous to prevent their identities from being known to those who might bribe or influence them. Not to conceal their identities so they can do shit like this.

This post pre-empted a planned post where the title "there's a baby in her shorts" was rejected for tackiness (my own). I had been reading the "investigative" tumblr about Tessa's pregnancy, and looking at the efforts of the person who has taken it upon herself to rebut this tumblr, a person who has used diagrams, outlines, logic, corrected timelines, etc. And of course, this person re-states that there are people, and this person is one, who know about Tessa's pregnancy not from "investigative research" of other people's pregnancies, or photos of Virtue taken from the web, but because they got the actual information from credible sources off line.

And that said, when I looked at the Gemini lounge photos, really looked, it was obvious the investigative tumblr creator missed half of Tessa's body. Tessa was a clever dresser.

So while it's a bit possibly tangential during TEB to have a post that diagrams some of Tessa's pregnant lady wardrobe strategems, and while I'm not as precise with marking the contours of where Fetal Moir resides as the tumblr participant is; it's close enough. And I think will be a worthwhile exercise in anticipation of the reality show coming soon to a television near us where we watch the platonic Scott and Tessa "Blow off steam" with family and friends. (Considering what has transpired in the sham albums over the years, I think that was a very unfortunate description.)

Somebody got new lips for their Olympic spotlight.

Normally I wouldn't think this merited comment, but if a small-busted sham girlfriend uploaded a cover photo with a close-up of her brand new rack, it would be rude not to notice. So same here.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

I'm assembling elements for the new banner, which is basically lying faces and maybe some text. That's the idea at the moment.

It is excruciating going through old interviews with the old lies. The second hand embarrassment is mortifying. This one in particular was torture:

Jian Ghameshi is more on the ball than I remembered. Once you adjust to his cheesy d.j. tones, he's no fool. He's not playing gotcha, but when he pins them down on stuff, it's like facial expression jackpot for the blog's banner material.

Further down, I'm going to post some of Scott's facial expressions after Ghameshi asked Scott if he were "angry" at Tessa during the first run of compartment syndrome, because there's a comment or two I want to make about that moment.

Friday, November 8, 2013

If you're skating while Davis White and don't show your key point edge, the judges will pretend you did.

Meryl exits this 1.5 twizzle on a shallow back inside edge and got Level 4.

Getting your level can make a difference between silver and gold. The tech callers never miss the opportunity to throw Virtue and Moir under the microscope, and never mind what else they're doing that buries the competition.

Here is Meryl exactly as she exits the first key point.

Thanks to the comment below I'm looking at the next key point to see where Meryl exits. Meryl exits both key points back on her blade.

Key Point 2 (amended thanks to comment below this post).

To orient ourselves visually, blade wise, look at Charlie's blade - where his blade is on the ice. It's forward. Meryl is not on the forward part of her blade. She's quite clearly back. If we look at her boot's orientation to the ice, she's not on an edge either, but let's not say 100% because of the straight on angle.

But this is to show it's possible to see when she is on an outside edge, and from the same angle (this is a beat after the image above).

Thursday, November 7, 2013

I was reading the "bookie" thread on fsu, where it was mentioned how it's fine if Virtue Moir take a GOE hit when something isn't executed perfectly, but other teams shouldn't get a pass. GOE should be applied fairly and it's not. DW get a bye.

And this was used as an example:

Just glorious.

Some might argue this is the preparation to the lift, not the lift. I would say that's the lift, that's the entrance. It's integral to how they get in. Once the drag is on, they're in the entrance. His dragging her past him and swinging her up creates her motion in space that is arrested when he turns himself under her facing the opposite direction.

And look at Charlie. Look at Meryl. On what planet is that proper form for anything? Her ass is practically on the ice; she's in a shoot the duck "pose" but not a real shoot the duck since obviously he's holding her up. Also her free leg is angled to the outside and her blade knee is angled the other way, so it's not even a shoot the duck pose. She'd be flat on her ass/back without him (even minus the fact that he's dragging, if you slowed them to a standstill she couldn't hold herself aligned like that) and he's just standing there like he's just dumped something on the ground.*

We can't run around being "Oh, that's not the element!" when it's how they enter the element, and then be all "oh it is the element!" when they approximate musical style by flinging an arm in the air after they're done with the twizzles (done with the element) and receive character of the music GOE because - close enough.

So let's back up and look at this beauty, since it's the flashy highlight of their free dance - three years in the making:

I encourage everyone to watch these. I especially appreciate that the videos have their own musical score (like a well-edited montage) which helps make it easy to watch many twizzles and numerous teams. The close editing is also a plus, each example starting and ending at the actual twizzle entrances and exits.

The material is, needless to emphasize, illuminating. :)

(ETA - I have just noticed, belatedly, that DW's twizzles are aptly scored with You Should be Dancing (yeah, too bad they're not) and VM's twizzles with The Best Things Happen When You're Dancing. :)

The videos fly by and instead of everything blurring, when somebody's twizzles aren't so hot it just jumps at you, when a team has grown, it jumps immediately. It's a great way to get information fast.

Let's note how fans are making the effort to scrutinize the figure skating and to notice if ice dance is actually being judged with integrity.

Looking at how "journalists" write about figure skating, and the mindset revealed in the figure skating marketing and commentary, and guided by the behavior of ice dance's biggest stars (Virtue and Moir) - figure skating in general and ice dance in particular is merely a delivery system for romantic fantasy, or material for relationship voyeurs. Those fans exist but what is accomplished by marketing as if those fans define the public interested in figure skating? They don't.

Virtue and Moir are the sport's greatest skaters, and they're just not interested in talking about their skating. They concentrate on whoring out their (fake) relationship, using the chemistry as a teaser, playing around and baiting, even though at the end of the day, every time, the public is led down a road to nowhere.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

In figure skating, one is supposed to use one's edges to glide across the ice. One is not supposed to (solely) use one's body weight, via poor alignment and pivoting your body to and fro in a rocking motion, to push edges into the ice for the sake of showing your edges are in. Skating is form follows function. DW do it the other way around, and it's exhausting. They have to apply energy on top of, and because of, their labored edge technique, instead of getting strength and power from it. They are in a state of perpetual compensation, working against the ice, the blades, and the whole point of skating.

Rolling shoulders forward, head forward, "digging in" as if their blades are a spade.
Look how wide a step they're taking. Instead of having long blade
run, they take big steps and push the edge in. It's driven by their
bodies but there's limited reciprocity with their blades carrying their
movement.

This post and its header have now been updated with canadablue's free dance comparison. Thanks once again to canadablue for permission to share these terrific comparison videos.

This post is a companion piece to a post I want to do about DW's edges. Once their edge strangeness was pointed out to me, I couldn't not see it (they shove their edges in deep, but don't get long blade run out of it). That means they're not USING their edges, they, instead, are using their bodies, and body lean, to drive their edges into the ice. It's backwards. As it's supposed to work, one has a deep edge and the body follows the line of that edge - it's edge up. Not pushing from the body down. No wonder DW are exhausted after every skate. Yes, there's a mutuality going on (you need strength to get deep into the ice) but that edge lean is supposed to travel up your body helping the skater move with power and security and long blade run. The skater's body is aligned along the edge lean. The skater isn't supposed to be bending over, leaning and swinging trying to get that edge IN without it going the other way.